Cyberpunk 2077 News

CD Projekt Red has announced a "long-term partnership" with a new Canadian studio called Digital Scapes, which I'd never heard of before now. But it's made up of developers from well-known studios: BioWare, Relic and Radical.

Yesterday, seemingly out of nowhere, a mysterious page of code appeared on CD Projekt Red's Twitch channel. After a few hours of anxious waiting, fans were rewarded with gameplay footage from Cyberpunk 2077, giving us our first extended look at what we can expect from the open world action role-playing adventure.

The demo, which was originally shown to media at E3 and Gamescom, is now available for all to view on YouTube - and in 4K too, if you want to experience the full glory of that shiny cyberpunk rain. It's a whole 48 minutes of first-person shooter action and a truly gritty introduction to life in the Cyberpunk 2077 universe. (NSFW warning: there's nudity, swearing and of course violence in the demo.)

From what's been shown, Cyberpunk 2077 has some impressive world-building: Night City is a bustling, grim world that's the perfect backdrop for sinister storylines and brutal combat.

Did you know there was a Witcher Tabletop Roleplaying Game in development, one you will play with pen and paper? It has a release date and it's not far away! The game will debut at tabletop paradise Gen Con on 2nd August, then will be sold via developer R. Talsorian Games' website and DriveThruRPG soon after.

It's likely to go down in history as one of the greatest E3 demos, its iconic status only embellished by the fact that outside of behind-closed-doors visitors, nobody has actually seen it. But the trailer footage looks sensational and reports of Cyberpunk 2077's gameplay are stoking plenty of excitement. And now, we have confirmation of the PC hardware that was actually running it.

It's all very well Wesley painting an ever-so-exciting picture of Cyberpunk 2077 after seeing nearly an hour of the game at E3 2018, but we - everyone watching from afar - haven't seen it, have we? I mean we're not jealous but it's really unfair.

All we've seen is the Cyberpunk 2077 reveal trailer which, OK, yes, does do a rather magnificent job of selling us on the character and riches of the Night City playground we'll lose ourselves in - you could even argue it's the city which will be the main character in CD Projekt Red's new game.

But before there was a trailer - awaited with something approaching Grand Theft Auto-like anticipation - there was of course concept art, and now CD Projekt Red has shared a smattering of images of it.

UPDATE: The Cyberpunk 2077 trailer contained a secret letter. We now have a legible copy (barring a few words) of the two halves and I've typed out what it says.

"It's been over 2077 days since we announced our plan to develop Cyberpunk 2077. We released a CGI trailer, gave some interviews and... went dark. Normal procedure for these kinds of things - you announce a game and then shut up, roll up your sleeves, and go to work. We wanted to give you The Witcher 3 and both expansions first, which is why this period of staying silent was longer than we planned. Sorry for that.

"As soon as we concluded work on Blood and Wine, we were able to go on full speed ahead with CP2077's pre-production. But we chose to remain silent. Why? At some point, we made a decision to resume talking about the game only when we have something to show. Something meaningful and substantial. This is because we do realise you've been (im)patiently waiting for a very long time, and we wouldn't like anyone to feel that we're taking this for granted. On the contrary - it gives us a lot of extra motivation. The hype is real, so the sweat and tears need to be real too :).

There's been the suggestion of multiplayer in CD Projekt Red's new game Cyberpunk 2077 for a while. In 2013, studio head Adam Badowski even told me "we're going to add multiplayer features", although he also said "it will be a story-based RPG experience with amazing single-player playthroughs". Regardless, that was five years ago, and a lot has happened since then.

CD Projekt Red has been at pains to keep the conversation away from Cyberpunk 2077 in recent years. The Polish developer announced the game very early in order to attract talent to the studio, but then stopped discussing Cyberpunk 2077 entirely while The Witcher: Wild Hunt launched. This secrecy only intensified after the enormous success of The Witcher 3, as expectations rose dramatically about what the studio would be able to achieve next.

Some recent team-leader level departures from Cyberpunk 2077 led to speculation there was trouble in paradise - and paradise began sounding worse and worse the more CD Projekt Red company reviews on employee feedback site Glassdoor I read.